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Gentleness vs.Harshness

"Showing consideration and personal concern for others"

 

 GENTLENESS - A Four-Minute Sermon
Faith Committee, Character Council of Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky

Contributed by Clyde C. Miller
Senior Pastor (Retired), First Christian Assembly, Cincinnati, OH
January 12, 2002


GENTLENESS

Outline:

  1. Gentleness By Definition
  2. Gentleness By Demonstration
  3. Gentleness By History
  4. Gentleness By Jesus And Paul
  5. Conclusion

  1. GENTLENESS BY DEFINITION

    Gentleness starts with "gen". "Gens" means belonging together by birth. Other words containing this root, "gens" include "Genesis" (book of beginnings), generations, genealogy, genetic and genes. It's the "root or beginning of".

    To the ancient Romans, it meant "being united by descent through the male line from a common ancestor and having both name and religious observances in common, also any tribe or clan". (Webster's Collegiate Dictionary). Archaic use of the world "gentle" usually referred to someone who was "well-bred", one of "polite society".

    John, the Apostle of Jesus, late in his long life, wrote to the first century Christians, "You are of God, little children..." (1 John 4:4), that is, your "gens" (genes, roots, parentage) is from your Father, God. Our ancestry is settled. We are either the "children of God" through our new, spiritual birth (John 3:3), or we are children of our father the devil through The Fall of Mankind (John 8:44).

    God, looking down from heaven, knows them that are His. Even in the animal world, it's true. You can turn a mother cow loose among any number of new-born calves and she'll find her own. If one of the "lower creatures" of God knows her own, wouldn't Almighty God? Of course! In fact Jesus even says so: "He calls His own sheep by name..." (John 10:3).

  2. GENTLENESS BY DEMONSTRATION

    You can usually tell a lot about a man by the behavior of his offspring. While ill-behaved kids sometimes come out of good family upbringing, many, if not most, develop a lifestyle similar to that in which they were raised. Similarly, you can tell a good deal about a society by the god or gods it serves, their spiritual lineage. Even as in the case of children of certain lineage, cliches abound: "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree", "like father, like son", "the spitting image of...", etc., etc..

  3. GENTLENESS BY HISTORY

    Gentleness, historically, has been a quality of the "well-bred". If God's followers, (his children) show this quality, then it must be also in their Father. We are truly "chips off the old block". This truth flies in the face of those who point to the God of the Old Testament as being a vengeful, provincial, angry deity who authorizes and sometimes commands genocide. Even when God is telling the Israelites to "destroy the Canaanites", it came from a broken-hearted God Who saw no other way to clear the land of self-destructive inhabitants who would infest any new-comer with the same.

  4. GENTLENESS BY JESUS AND PAUL

    Jesus, Himself, affirmed that you could tell a tree by its fruit (Matthew 7:33) and "a good man out of the good treasures of his heart brings forth good things..." (Matthew 7:35). The Apostle Paul declared that one of the fruits that God's Spirit produces in any person He indwells is "Gentleness" (Galatians 9:22). In fact, it is listed in the very center of the cluster of nine major character qualities he lists that are of representative of God's Holy Spirit.

    Mark, writer of the second Gospel) left Paul and Barnabas in a fit of homesickness and Paul never forgot it. He refused to let Mark accompany them on a subsequent trip. But late in life, the imprisoned Paul asked that Mark be brought to him because Mark was now "profitable to me for the ministry" (2 Timothy 4:11). The Greek word for "profitable' is of the same origin (!) as the word "gentleness" defined as a fruit of the Spirit (op. cit. Galatians 5:22). Mark's Godly genes had finally produced Gentleness in him, and he was now "profitable for the ministry."

  5. CONCLUSION

    Gentlemen and Gentlewomen reflect their Godly source. May it be true of us all. May we all be as sweet as the water of the Well from which we spring.

 

 

This material is published by the Faith Committee of the Character Council of Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. Reproduction and Adaptation is encouraged.